And one mom's surprising solution.
Things had not been going well for Naomi Peña's son in the first grade. Jonah was a smart kid who liked to listen to stories and was socially engaged. But his teacher said he was easily distracted and wouldn't focus, especially when it came to reading. So Naomi sat Jonah down at the dinner table and asked him why he wasn't doing the work that was being assigned. |
"Mom," she recalls him telling her, "I don't know what is going on. It's like my brain won't let me." |
Jonah was eventually diagnosed with dyslexia, a learning disability that affects the brain's ability to connect the written word to sounds for language. Like Jonah, my daughter Cassenia was also diagnosed after she had trouble reading even the simplest three-letter words. In fact, one in five people in the United States have some form of dyslexia. |
Even though it is common, getting help is daunting. When I joined online groups for parents of kids with dyslexia, instead of finding concrete information, I came across cries of despair from parents combined with pleas for help in guiding their children through what is a confusing and complicated landscape. It was a cacophony of need. |
Federal law states that public schools have to provide dyslexic children with "free appropriate education" that is tailored to their specific needs. Naomi eventually had three more children, all with dyslexia, and discovered that despite that legal protection, public schoolteachers often didn't understand the disability and didn't have the training to help students overcome it. |
More broadly, some 67 percent of American fourth graders do not read proficiently, which can have profound effects later in their lives. The explanation for why so many kids are struggling is complex, but experts now blame many teachers' reliance on a philosophy that became popular in the 1990s called "balanced literacy." This method largely assumes that children will simply learn how to read by being exposed to books and memorizing words. In fact, balanced literacy is contradicted by decades of scientific research. There is a better way to teach children to read, and it's an approach developed to help children with dyslexia. |
This week on the Times Opinion podcast "First Person," I talk to Naomi Peña about the maddening experience we both have gone through, trying to get our dyslexic children the education they deserve — and why it's become her mission to help all students learn how to read. |
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